Topic Sentences: One Line, One Point
The first sentence of a body paragraph has one job: tell the reader what the paragraph will do. Organisation of ideas is a Language criterion, and the between-paragraph rung of the cohesion ladder is climbed mostly by these sentences.
Three ways it goes wrong
- Too general. “Living in a city is good because it is convenient.” Which convenience? The paragraph could be about anything.
- Too long. A topic sentence carrying three reasons, two examples and a statistic. Nothing left for the paragraph to do.
- Not there. The paragraph opens mid-story, and the reader has to work out the point from the end.
The shape
One line. One point. One reason. It should pick up a word or idea from your thesis, so the reader hears the map being followed.
Just right: “The first thing a large city offers is time: work, shops and clinics sit within a short train ride, and the hours saved add up over a week.”
The test
Read only the topic sentences of your essay, in order, skipping everything else. If they read as a summary of the argument, your organisation is sound. If they read as random, the essay is random too, however good the sentences inside each paragraph are.
Practise in two minutes
Take any past question. Write the thesis, then four topic sentences. Nothing else. Four or five lines that read as a plan — that is the whole skill.
Read next
- O-Level English: Two Weeks Out, Week Two of the Plan
- The Thesis as a Map
- Continuous Writing: Content Is 10 Marks. Language Is 20.
The Sentence Repair Kit Complete Bundle covers the sentence-level control that decides the Language band — all four editions for $22.90. Free practice sheets download instantly.
Mark allocations and assessment criteria from the SEAB GCE O-Level English Language (1184) syllabus, 2026.
